On
the 30 January Today Show, Laurence Fishburne rolled up on
his motorcycle. He and his mini-crew of bikers revved their engines
and wore colorful leather jackets; after a little chitchat, Fish
presented host Al Roker with a jacket of his very own. Happy as all
get-out, Al tore off his overcoat and tried on the new gear, turning
his back to the camera so everyone in TV-land could see that he was
proudly promoting Fishburne's new movie, Biker Boyz.

In
fact, as Fishburne noted during his two minutes on air with Al, he
rides, for real. Noting that the film is inspired by a particular
bikers' subculture -- highly competitive, organized, and proud --Fishburne
explained that the community is "predominantly black, but they
don't exclude anybody."

This
detail says something about how Biker Boyz was made and how
it's being marketed. Loud and rowdy as it may be, the film is
plainly designed to appeal across demographics, with a range of
(many) performers (Fishburne, Derek Luke, Orlando Jones, Lisa Bonet,
Kid Rock) and a range of narrative elements (action, comedy,
melodrama). Thematically, it looks backward and forward at once:
back to old school Westerns (the aging hero confronts the young gun)
and forward to the next logical step in the genre most raucously
represented by The Fast and the Furious. Drawing from video
games, extreme sports, the WWF, and Saturday morning cartoons, these
new-fangled flicks are short on character complexity, long on
incredible visual display -- spinning camerawork, digital timing (as
in "bullet"), and thrilling stunts enacted by busty girls
and buff guys.

Based
on a New Times article by Michael Gougis and scripted by
Craig Fernandez, Biker Boyz is also careful to respect its
sources, showing the bikers in their various glories -- they're not
boozing smackdown hooligans, but lawyers, husbands, doctors, and
what we might call venerable women (see, for instance, Half and
Half, played by Salli Richardson, tough chick extraordinaire -- who
garnered applause from the biker club audience with whom I saw the
film every time she appeared on screen). They're also
energetically multi-racial, which makes them of a piece with recent
action film casts: The Transporter, The Matrix, The
Scorpion King, and anything Vin Diesel (a one man multi-culti
cast).

This
latest version of the smash-action adventure is plainly designed to
appeal across multiple communities -- gendered, raced, aged, and
classed. The story involves father and son conflicts, youthful
passions, elder responsibilities, and inter-gang competitions.
Possible larger frameworks -- legal or social -- only exist on the
edges, to make bike racing slightly difficult (at one point,
faceless cops bust up a match; in another, offscreen authorities
make the bikers move their contest from a safe raceway to a farmer's
dirt road). For the most part, the bikers live in their own world,
in Southern California -- drinking, zooming, posturing, popping
wheelies, getting intricate tattoos, and riding into all kinds of
sunsets.

The
central narrative involves Fishburne's renowned biker, Smoke, and a
young upstart named Jaleel (Derek Luke). The latter's father, Slick
Will (Eriq La Salle), is Smoke's mechanic, and the kid (whose
nickname is, apparently significantly, Kid) resents that he appears
to do whatever Smoke says and Smoke, leader of the Black Knights
Club, gets all the public respect and glory. When, in one of the
first scenes, his father is killed in a freak accident (he's not
even riding), Kid briefly drops out of the scene to reassess. He
returns, of course ("Six months later," reads the helpful
title), to challenge Smoke to a Big Race. This against the noisy
resistance of his mother, Anita (Vanessa Bell Calloway), who tells
him that in the ER, where she works, they call bikers "organ
donors." This point about the risks of biking is certainly made
in the first brutal death scene, and a sign of Smoke's maturity is
his realization that there are more important things to do than win
races.

Still,
he's initially distracted by persistent mini-challenges from bikers
like Dogg (Kid Rock), who tends to bump opponents off the track.
Meanwhile, Kid has his own obstacles to overcome, namely, the rules
of the biker set. To get access to Smoke, first he has to put
together his own crew, in order to rise to the level of legitimacy,
so he starts a club with his buddies Stuntman (Brendan Fehr) and
Primo (Rick Gonzalez). Visibly "diverse," this trio
attracts a next generation of bikers to their organization: the
first two newbies are Filipino, played by real life brothers Dante
and Dion Brasco. Clever, gifted, and brash, these kids are quick to
mount outrageous stunts, daring their elders to keep up.

The
basic Western structure -- Kid and Smoke's rivalry -- makes for a
predictable plot trajectory: Kid will learn some lessons, "King
of Cali" Smoke will have to face his own demons, Anita will
reveal a secret, and Kid's bodacious girlfriend, Tina (Meagan Good),
will show some skin. It also grants the proceedings traditional
emotional weight. (It helps that Luke, of Antwone Fisher
fame, and other participants are solid performers -- no Paul Walkers
here.) Most often, the film's emotional tensions take the form of
soap operatic close-ups (Bell Calloway most definitely carries these
scenes).

That's
not to say that everyone has a decent role; some characters feel
like they've been cut, rather cruelly. Terrence Howard, Djimon
Hounsou, and Tyson Beckford have about two or three minutes on
screen each; designated troublemaker Wood (Larenz Tate) picks on Kid
and sparks a fight; and, as Smoke's infinitely patient current
squeeze, Queenie, Lisa Bonet spends too much time gazing up at her
big-chested man.

Amid
all the conventional movie dazzle, Biker Boyz's most
important idea is the bike. However you read it, as a sign of
freedom or aggression, individuality or conformity, potency,
masculinity, and/or beauty, the bike is broadly mythic, proudly
ritual, absolutely immediate and material. It looks great in the
stunts and trick shots, and its on-screen speed is downright
visceral. What's remarkable about this film is that, at last, the
bike's power and appeal are granted to a "predominantly"
black, multi-racial group of folks who "don't exclude
anybody." And that's radical.